Plainly's Official MCP Server

The official MCP server for Plainly Videos, a cloud-based video automation platform that renders Adobe After Effects templates natively in the cloud.

It lets AI agents and MCP clients (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, or any MCP-compatible client) browse your video templates, fill in their parameters, submit renders, and check the render status of each one.

What you can do with it

Ask your AI assistant directly:

• "List my Plainly templates and show me what parameters the YouTube intro needs"
• "Render the Promo Template 16:9 with the headline 'Summer sale', this logo, and with colour #87CEEB"
• "Create me a unique video for all 100 rows of data from this CSV file"
• "Check if my renders are done and give me the preview links"
• "Render a test video with placeholder values so I can verify the template works"

Combine it with other MCP servers to build agents that generate videos from live data:

• Weather-triggered ads - weather MCP server checks the forecast, agent renders localized ad variants ("Rainy week in Berlin - 20% off umbrellas")
• Product feed to video - connect a Shopify or product catalog MCP server and render a promo video for every product, with the name, price, image, and discount pulled straight from the feed
• Sports recaps - connect a sports data MCP server and turn last night's scores into a highlight video for each game
• And more

🎥 Demo

📋 Prerequisites

• Node.js ≥ 18 (required)
• NPM
• Plainly Account

▶️ How to Run

Install via npm

1. Get your Plainly API key

• Go to Settings page
• Create a new API key
• Copy the new API key

1. Add config to your editor

   {
     "servers": {
       "plainly": {
         "command": "npx",
         "args": ["-y", "@plainly-videos/mcp-server@latest"],
         "env": {
           "PLAINLY_API_KEY": "<PLAINLY_API_KEY>"
         }
       }
     }
   }
   

   🔑 Replace <PLAINLY_API_KEY> with your actual API key.

Install via Smithery

Go to Smithery Plainly MCP page, select your LLM client, and copy the generated command.

For example, with Claude as the client:

npx -y @smithery/cli@latest install @plainly-videos/mcp-server --client claude --key <YOUR_SMITHERY_KEY>

🔑 Replace <YOUR_SMITHERY_KEY> with your Smithery API key.

🛠️ Available Tools

• list_renderable_items - returns a list of all criteria matching designs and custom projects for authenticated user
• get_renderable_items_details - returns details of a single design or custom project, such as: required and optional parameters, preview links, aspect ratios, etc.
• render_item - submits a render with all needed parameters
• check_render_status - checks the render status and report error or preview links

🗣️ Prompts & Resources

This implementation does not include prompts or resources from the MCP specification. However, this may change in the future when there is broader support across popular MCP clients.

🚧 Development Mode

If you want to run the server in development mode, you can install dependencies and run the server using the following command:

1. Clone, install, and build:

git clone git@github.com:plainly-videos/mcp-server.git
cd mcp-server

yarn install
yarn build

1. Add your API key in .vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "plainly": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["<FULL PATH TO dist/cli.js>"],
      "env": {
        "PLAINLY_API_KEY": "<PLAINLY_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

1. Start MCP server from .vscode/mcp.json

📄 Plainly Developer Resources

• Help center
• API reference

If you find this project helpful, please consider giving it a ⭐!